


Roses are red...Steve's a bad boyfriend

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Birthday Presents, Community: 1_million_words, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Steve should be ashamed, but he isn't, gently sprinkled with crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6761248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny wakes to find that he may have underestimated Steve's gift-giving creativity. He actually <i>did</i> underestimate him...just not in the way he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses are red...Steve's a bad boyfriend

**Author's Note:**

> Teen rating for a very-slightly off-color practical joke, just fyi.
> 
> This was written to a prompt that had the potential to be really angsty:
> 
> A red rose  
> A silver photo frame near a rain-splattered window  
> Delayed receipt of a letter/call/text
> 
> I wanted to see how _not-angsty_ I could make it, and this nonsense followed.

“I'm sorry to ask this,” Steve said, voice low and a bit urgent from the passenger’s seat, his focus on his cell phone. “But can you drive faster?”

Chin pressed the gas pedal a touch harder, only letting his eyes leave the twisty two-lanes in front of them for a split second.

“Is something wrong?” 

They were returning to HQ from the hilliest, most remote section of Oahu where they’d spent the early a.m. helping HPD successfully track a missing couple. It wasn’t how they’d expected to spend their day when they got up, but it felt great to see the young hikers come out of it unharmed except for some bruises and a broken bone.

Up where they were, now? There wasn’t much cell strength. Chin guessed that must be the issue. It must also be why Steve had let him drive; his need to focus on the screen he was staring resolutely at, visibly willing something to happen. 

“It’s nothing _hugely_ urgent….but I’m waiting on a text from Danny. I spent a lot of time setting this up, you know? Hiding everything around my house, leaving him a note on his pillow…”

Danny, who had taken his birthday off in order to celebrate in his favorite way: sleeping in. Considering Danny, and the fact that it was only ten thirty… Chin thought Steve probably hadn’t missed too much.

“That’s really thoughtful of you,” Chin nodded, adding it all up. “You hid his presents and made it into a kind of scavenger hunt.”

“Sort of,” Steve ceased staring at the phone long enough to waggle his eyebrows at Chin. “I did hide ….stuff. But, presents? That would be a generous description.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Danny’s always riding me about how I’m not romantic, right? Last week he gave me grief _in advance_ about how lame my gifts would be. So I left him some extremely romantic things. Three poems, three presents - and a note on his pillow telling him that each and every one came from deep inside my heart.”

“Except?”

“I lived down to his expectations. They all suck,” Steve was grinning now. “The poems, the presents…and he’ll think that’s _it_. That’s all he’s getting; crappy presents and some sad poems.

“You know you’ll probably pay for this?”

“Yeah… but it’ll be worth it. Uuuupppp…” Steve smacked his phone with the back of his free hand. “Cell tower, finally. Perfect timing: he only found the note on his pillow a minute ago. He says he’s impressed, and _‘I may have underestimated you, babe; I can’t wait to find your other sentiments, I know how much of a difficult, emotional investment this must have been for you….’_ "

“Ouch.” Chin said. “Backhanded compliment there, boss.”

“You think?”

“Do you want to tell me how the poems go?”

“Sure….”

~*~

“A bowl of vanilla ice cream?” Danny stared into their freezer, where the first note had led him. “What the….hell?”

It wasn’t like he had a particular fascination with frozen treats. Steve knew his dessert preferences and ice cream wasn’t among them, let alone ice cream with mini Snickers bar bites sprinkled all over it. The whole thing looked heavy and absurdly caloric - sickly sweet enough to choke a horse. Not to mention Steve hadn’t wrapped it in any way, so, when he stuck a fork in it, the whole thing was a little….gummy.

But hey… it was the thought that counted, yes? Steve had tried, here.

There was a note with it. 

“A poem?” 

Well, that gave him a definite flutter of something happy in his chest, the idea of Steve writing him a poem. He took the admittedly pretty sad ice-cream sundae and the hopefully far tastier poem to the kitchen table to eat one and read the other. 

_If love is an iceberg then I'm the Titanic._  
_You sink me, baby. You sink me with your sharp love full of edges._  
_You are all icy edges, Danny._  
_Paint me like your French boys._  
_(No, seriously, paint me. I'm bringing home watercolors and an easel as a gift and I would like for you to paint me. I’d be really be honored if you would.)_

~*~

“Oh my God…” Chin was slumped in the driver’s seat, chuckling; a very hopeful sign, Steve thought. “Does Danny even paint?”

“Hell, no; he does not, sir.”

“There’s no way he’s not calling bullshit on you!”

“Oh, I think he’ll buy it,” Steve was chuckling too. “I laid it on pretty thick in that first note, about how carefully every gift had been thought out. With my heart, not my head, you know? Ah, here we go…. text bubble. He’s writing… he’s writing…and…nothing. He has no idea what to say back to me. Perfect.”

“Honestly, I’m a little disappointed in him.”

“It’s so …cute though, isn’t it? A detective with the wool pulled over his eyes?”

“You suck, McGarrett….”

“Yeah….” Steve admitted. “Sometimes I kind of do.”

~*~

Danny didn’t have to walk far for his next gift. Which was convenient – but on further reflection that was about the kindest thing he could say about it.

“Good for a half dozen Malasadas from any Island Short Stop,” he read aloud the coupons he’d just pulled from the envelope. “Okay, well, getting warmer, Steven, but….”

Gas station malasadas? Crappy, crappy, probably mostly stale doughnuts? On top of iffy ice cream? Really? 

“How much am I supposed to forgive, here?” Danny asked the envelope, looking in it like something more exciting might suddenly appear.

There was a slip of paper in there. 

Another poem.

_If you were a doughnut, I'd leave you in the box._  
_I would never eat you._  
_Because if I ate you, you’d be gone._  
_It would be awful to have such sweetness near me and not devour it._  
_But I'd keep you forever, Danno._  
_Forever a doughnut in a box on my counter._

~*~

“Babe…” Steve read Danny’s text message out loud to Chin. “This may explain why you’re still single. That’s all I’m saying…”

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve saved the best for last?” Chin asked.

“Oh…. I did.”

~*~

“I don’t even know what this is supposed to be of….” Danny turned the small, silver frame in his hands around at all angles. “I don’t know what the hell to make of this picture, ‘cause….. I can’t even tell what the hell it’s _of_ …”

He had followed the final clue to his final present, which took him to the window in Steve’s little study. At first glance, it was the most hopeful of Steve’s creations: a red rose sat on the windowsill, a silver photo frame right behind with the poem propped against it.

A quick rain shower had moved through, and the sun was shining through the clouds, lighting up the glass and the whole scene. It was lovely, and would be deeply touching, probably, if Danny could figure out what the very-close-up picture in his hand was actually …of. 

It looked kind of artsy fartsy but also ….vaguely….familiar. 

“Maybe if I read the poem….”

_Roses are red_  
_Violets are blue_  
_I love your balls_  
_And your toes are cute, too – but sometimes they’re a little rough on my legs._

“What …the actual fuck?” 

Danny looked back toward the window sill and saw them: the athletic cup with a note by it reading ‘for next year’s Tough Mudder,’ and a pumice stone with a note that read ‘for your sweet little feet….’

“Testicles!” Danny shook the photo frame at his phone, shouting at it like Steve could hear him through the text messaging app. “This… is a picture…. of…..”

~*~

“….my testicles?!” Danny was screaming into the phone. “You _took_ …and _framed_ …a picture of my actual _balls_?”

“I thought you would think it was sweet...and creative....” Steve said into his phone, fighting hard to keep the tone sincere, a hand on Chin’s shoulder to brace him as Chin fought the laughter wracking him, searching for a parking lot to pull into…quickly. 

Before he drove them both into a ditch.

“Steven, I did underestimate you,” Danny shouted through the speaker, now that Steve had put him on speaker. “I underestimated how….bad you are at this. To call this attempt at celebrating my birthday _lame_?” That would be a vast…a _gigantic_ insult to lame … _pathetic_ birthday presents everywhere!”

Steve was going to try to follow up with a deeply wounded sentence or two about how hard he’d tried and how sorry he was, but he couldn’t quite pull it off: He was laughing, now, too along with Chin - and in the silence from the other end of the phone Steve could almost picture it all dawning on Danny.

“You ...are a hot mess...” Danny said. “When, exactly, did you take a picture of my balls?”

“Last weekend. Sunday morning. Don’t worry, no one else saw it; I only printed the one out at the drug store, at that kiosk thing where you can use to print your pics.”

“You better have a real present for me, you son of a bitch or…”

“Look under my pillow, Danny,” Steve said. “You’ll find it there. Envelope. Itinerary. Tickets. Call me back, okay?”

“Oh, I’ll call you back. I’ll call you…. a lot of things if…”

Steve hit ‘end,’ before Danny could say anything he’d regret in front of Chin.

“What are you really giving him?” Chin asked, catching his breath, wiping an eye on the shoulder of his polo shirt.

“I’m taking him to Maui for a long weekend. Golf resort. Wine him, dine him, play golf until we drop. Hell, I’m even gonna sleep in and have breakfast in bed if he wants. All three mornings.”

“You… are both a monster,” Chin pronounced. “And also a pretty good boyfriend.”

“And look at this….” Steve gestured toward the shop in front of them. “A bakery. Maybe I can take home some decent malasadas as a peace offering.”

“Wise. You want him talking to you before the trip to Maui.”

“Do I?” Steve asked. “Yeah…. I guess I do.”

“Better get a couple dozen of them.”

“Can’t hurt.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was looking for a title, and found [a mug on Etsy](https://www.etsy.com/listing/257897805/poetry-coffee-mug-roses-are-red-poetry?ref=market) that read "Roses are red, violets are blue, this poem doesn't rhyme, testicles!" -- I thought about making that the title, but figured i'd keep it 'G' on the title page, lol....


End file.
